Preattentive and Attentive Visual Information Processing

93119356 Egeth这个项目旨在研究注意选择性的时间和空间方面。在空间领域，这项研究旨在阐明前注意和焦点注意过程在任务执行中是如何协作的。在时间域中，注意力集中在非信息性线索之后的早期促进和后来的抑制上，目的是澄清什么时候加工是视网膜中心的、基于环境的、基于对象的或以对象为中心的。第一组拟议的实验旨在确定受试者在复杂的显示器中搜索相关信息时，避免分心材料的效率。现有的工作导致了对这类任务绩效的相互矛盾的理论解释；拟议的研究应该有助于在这些相互竞争的选择中做出决定。第二组实验探索了将注意力引导到特定位置的提示(例如，微弱光线的短暂变亮)的后果。这样的提示提高了检测出现在提示位置的目标的能力。然而，令人惊讶的是，这种改进是短暂的(大约1/2秒)，随后是更长时间的性能下降。拟议的实验是为了解释导致这种性能下降的因素。除了它们的理论意义外，这两组实验在实验室之外的世界都有意义。这种工作与工作场所的许多环境有关，并可能导致发现方法，以减少因疏忽而有时造成的灾难性后果。****

93119356 Egeth This project is designed to examine the temporal and spatial aspects of attentional selectivity. In the spatial domain, the research is designed to clarify how preattentive and focal attentive processes cooperate in the performance of tasks. In the temporal domain, the focus is on early facilitation and later inhibition following an uninformative cue, with a goal of clarifying when processing is retinocentric, environmentally based, object based, or object centered. The first set of proposed experiments is designed to determine the efficiency with which subjects can avoid distracting material as they search through complicated displays looking for relevant information. Existing work has led to conflicting theoretical explanations of performance in such tasks; and the proposed research should help decide among these competing alternatives. A second set of experiments explores the aftermath of a cue (e.g., the brief brightening of a dim light) that directs attention to a specific location. Such a cue improves the ability to detect targets presented at the cued location. However, what is surprising is that such improvement is short-lived (about 1/2 sec), and is followed by a longer lasting performance decrement. The proposed experiments are an effort to explain the factors that cause this performance decrement. In addition to their theoretical significance, both sets of experiments have significance in the world outside the laboratory. Such work is pertinent to many settings in the work place and may lead to the discovery of methods to reduce the sometimes catastrophic consequences of a failure to pay attention. ****